About 9 years ago, I found myself in this beautiful imperial-themed courtyard restaurant at the outskirts of Beijing. There was an intricate Chinese garden, the staff were dressed up in imperial period costume, and I was with people who were important to me. It was the picture of perfection. It looked from the outside that I had everything I wanted. There by the garden was a wishing tree, and I stood in front of it and I thought: All I want is to feel happy. No matter how perfect things looked from the outside, there was a gnawing sense of sadness and emptiness inside. Things are not what they seem.

We live in a world now that runs on appearances. We post our vacation pictures for all the world to see, our new haircut, things we've acquired, even yoga poses we've mastered. But it's a partial picture. We don't post photos of our sadness or despair or disappointment. We don't post pictures of us fighting with our mothers or our credit card statements telling us how much money we owe. We've been filtering and curating what we want the world to see, and hiding the rest for ourselves or if we're lucky, to a select few.

Many of us feel the pressure to appear perfect and put-together, to create this facade that we're doing great, to let the world know that we're on top of our game. But by putting on the facade, we may lose sight of what's real, we may forget to honor our struggles, we may be pretending to live a life that's not truly ours.

I find that for me, what eventually brought me to happiness is a willingness to let go of that facade, to be less worried about what others may think, and to examine and dig deep and find a life that is truly mine, one I live not for appearances but for myself. And when situations arise that negative emotions come up, it's okay to own all of those feelings. It's ok to invite these emotions up and acknowledge them. It's ok if we don't have everything. It's ok not to be perfect. It's ok to struggle. It's ok not to have everything figured out. It's ok to be human and have all of these human experiences.

So in our practice today, I invite you to examine what's behind the facade that you may sometimes put on. I invite you to do nothing else but be you. I invite you to feel nothing else but what you truly feel at the moment. I invite you to feel what it's like to be you, not who you think you were or who you think you should be, but who you are at this moment. We've become so used to keeping up appearances that we sometimes forget that as long as we are comfortable being who we are, we create a safe space for ourselves. And that's all we need. Then we don't need to compare ourselves with others or be victims of societal pressure. Then we don't need to feel unloved or unaccomplished. When we are who we are with full unconditional acceptance, we are free in our imperfection.